


How to Succeed in Captivity Without Even Dying

by The_Escaped



Series: Brawl in the Family AU [2]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Awkward Murder Children, Gen, I couldn't think of anything good, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Mercury and Emerald get out AU, No one in this damn family knows how to talk, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Raven is Mercury's Mom AU, Swearing, sorry about the title, the kids aren't alright
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2020-05-07 11:49:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19208797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Escaped/pseuds/The_Escaped
Summary: Mercury hadn’t known what to expect when he’d contacted Ozpin’s group. They’d been just on the side of too-desperate to worry about it. But whatever he’d had roughly planned out, Mercury was sure this wasn’t it.For one thing, Xiao Long finding out Raven was his mother sure as shit hadn’t been part of the plan.Or, the one where Mercury and Emerald switch sides, no one is acting like they thought about it, and why the hell is Qrow watching them like that, anyway?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there! This is the start of the sequel to It's Brawl in the Family. I hope you like it! I have a lot written for this AU, but not necessarily in order, so I'll try my best to get the next few chapters of this out as best I can, but expect delays.

Mercury hadn’t known what to expect when he’d contacted Ozpin’s group. They’d been just on the side of too-desperate to worry about it.

But whatever he’d had roughly planned out, Mercury was sure this wasn’t it.

“What the fuck do you mean the questions can wait?”

Red looked uncomfortable, but she held firm.

“You only woke up today. You need to heal.”

Mercury looked to Emerald for some kind of explanation for this ridiculous logic, but once Red had shown up in the doorway again she’d gone tight-lipped. Currently she was doing her very best to fade into the wallpaper without using her Semblance.

No help from that front then.

“There’s nothing wrong with my head,” he pointed out, because he wasn’t about to point out that it was the height of stupidity to not press an advantage like this when it fell into her lap.

Emerald’s lips creased as she stopped herself making some smartass comment. Xiao Long snorted.

“That’s debatable,” she said, arms crossed over her chest, and he scowled at her.

Xiao Long finding out Raven was his mother sure as shit hadn’t been part of the plan. If Mercury had had his way no one would have found out about that until long after he was dead.

From what Xiao Long had said, it sounded like he’d almost gotten his wish.

“You had a concussion,” Red said in a voice that was much kinder than her sister’s and just as off-putting, “A serious one. And besides that…” she trailed off, but her eyes strayed to the bottom half of the bed, where Mercury’s legs most decidedly weren’t, and anger spiked through him.

Mercury opened his mouth to let her know exactly what he thought of _that_ , but Blondie didn’t give him a chance.

“You’re not in charge,” she said bluntly, interrupting him before he did something to ruin their truce here. He had a feeling she knew that was what she’d done, had a feeling that was exactly why she’d done it. He didn’t appreciate it. He didn’t like that she’d pieced together enough of him to know that. “Deal with it. Emerald can come with me to change and then you can both sleep."

"What about the questions?" Mercury asked though gritted teeth. 

"We'll get to it eventually."

Mercury swiveled to look at Emerald, who looked very much like she’d rather Xiao Long had forgotten about her completely. Her eyes slanted to Mercury, but Xiao Long hadn’t phrased her decision as a request, and for all Red was talking mercy and patience, for all Xiao Long has said she would keep Emerald safe, they weren’t stupid enough to think it would be that easy. That, at least, was something they’d predicted right. She followed Xiao Long out, and after a long, awkward pause, Red followed suit.

He waited until they were all gone to slump back against the headboard of the bed, running a hand through his hair.

Yeah, this was not what Mercury had envisioned. He didn’t really appreciate these kids blowing his carefully constructed plans out of the water like this, for all this seemed to be better than he’d expected.

 

 

Emerald slept in his room, and Mercury had been unconscious too long to know if it was because he was in the prisoner room or if she’d insisted on it. He should’ve asked her about it, but she was so tense when she got steered back into the room that night with a bundle of blankets held tight to her chest that he decided to put it off. She looked like if she had to worry about one more thing she was going to snap.

Xiao Long was behind her. She looked like she was on the verge of saying something, but she only grimaced slightly and closed the door, leaving him and Emerald alone in the room.

It clicked behind her, the tumblers of a lock falling into place. If it was supposed to intimidate them, it kind of missed the mark, Mercury thought as Emerald sagged in relief, fingers uncurling from their deadlock on the quilt. She threw it onto the floor next to the bed, kicking it into place.

Mercury looked her up and down and felt his lip curl into a smirk.

“Are those Red’s pajamas?”

Emerald was a lot shorter when she wasn’t wearing those heels, but she was still taller than Red. The pants looked ridiculous on her. She sniffed and tugged at the cuffs.

“Shut up. Like you look any better.” Mercury refused to wrinkle his nose at the clothing he’d woken up in, which reeked of booze and was two sizes too big. Not while Emerald could see, anyway.

“It’s probably a good sign,” Mercury said, as she made a nest with the blankets they’d given her on the floor, “Them giving you clothes to wear. Maybe it’ll be easier than you thought to make them like you.”

Emerald made a noncommittal noise. Her expression was getting pinched again. She sat back against the wall, blankets puddled around her, with her arms across her knees. She looked like she wanted to be left alone. Tough shit. Their lives were on the line here, and Mercury needed information if they were going to get out of this.

“So what happened while I was out?”

And whether she wanted to talk or not, Emerald understood how screwed they were. So she told him about Ruby and Xiao Long bringing them here, about the shouting that had ensued when everyone else found out about it, the treatment they’d had to give him to keep him alive. The people who had tried to enter the room, whose advance Xiao Long and Red had slowed to a trickle of one or two at a time.

She hadn’t left him alone. She was adamant about that, that the time he woke up was the only time she’d left the room.

“Okay. Okay,” he repeated, trying to plot out their next move. They were away from Salem. Cinder was gone. Now they were going to be under lock and key for a while, but that was alright. That, at least, was something they’d planned for. These guys hadn’t even tied them up. Emerald was good at insinuating herself; she’d had to be, to survive on the streets before her Semblance kicked in, and at the moment he looked helpless enough that if they were still bleeding hearts they should leave him alone. He hated it, but he could use it if he had to. “So it could be a lot worse. At least you didn’t use your Semblance on any of them.”

It was the kind of backhanded compliment that they usually used, but instead of smirking Emerald tensed, eyes scuttling to the side, and suddenly it wasn’t funny at all anymore. Mercury sat up straight.

“Tell me you didn’t.”

“I didn’t mean to,” she said, which was _not_ what he’d told her to say, “I just needed a minute to think-”

He should have fucking known; Emerald relied too much on her Semblance for anything else to have happened. She always had, as long as he’d known her, this dumbass kid with no power behind any of her punches, putting all her faith in a trick that could be taken away just like that, and how could she have been stupid enough to be throwing it around here?

_A crutch_ , he could hear Marcus Black’s voice slithering into his ear, _and once it's gone, what's left to her?_

And now she couldn’t use it, and it was going to get her killed. Get _both_ of them killed, and Mercury had invested too damn much effort into keeping them alive for them to go down if she slipped up again.

“You _need_ to keep them happy,” he said tersely, the words hissing between gritted teeth because how could Emerald not understand how important this was? “That’s how we’re going to survive this.”

“Or because Xiao Long’s your sister.” His jaw clicked closed. Mercury’s train of thought ground to a halt. Emerald was the one scowling this time. “She said you’re her brother. She said Raven’s your mother, and that makes you siblings. Is it true?”

“How many people did she say that to?” he asked cautiously, and something flickered in Emerald’s expression, there and gone too fast for him to track, and then she just looked angry again.

“So it is. Don’t you think that was something worth mentioning?”

If she was angry she could fucking get in line.  “No, I didn’t,” he said tersely, “It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters!” Mercury flopped back on the bed. Emerald followed him, getting too close into his space, prodding as fucking usual. Like _he_ was the one who’d fucked up here. “I should have known about it,” she insisted.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with you!” he retorted.

Emerald’s breath caught. She glared off to the side and didn’t say anything more.

“What about the other thing?” he asked, when he’d gotten a better grip on his temper. “Did you let that slip too?” Because if they knew she was a Maiden now they were finished.

It was a cruel thing to say, because she’d only found out when she was with him anyway, and because if Ozpin’s people had found out he would have known about it, but it was so much easier to be cruel, especially when she kept poking at everything he’d wanted to keep hidden.

Her face twisted, “No, I didn’t let that slip,” she growled, voice with an edge of mocking. Like she was offended he thought otherwise, when apparently she’d been gambling their safety with her fucking Semblance.

“Well at least there’s that,” he snapped, and she flounced down into the pile of blanket on the floor, arms crossed.

He sighed. He hadn’t told anyone before, not even when Cinder would have been delighted by the chance to use it to sow even more chaos at Beacon. And he hadn’t told anyone for a _reason_. It was sloppy to have said it at the last moment, even if he’d been concussed. It was just giving people one more thing to hold against him. And these guys really, really didn’t need anything else to hold against him.

She couldn’t get mad at him for not saying anything, he thought indignantly. She had her own secrets from life before Cinder had picked her up, and he had his. They didn’t pry. He didn’t ask what it had been like living on the streets, not even when Torchwick had brought it up every chance he got. Him being able to keep secrets was what helped them get away, and she was fucking welcome.

“Does that mean you’re with them now?”

Whatever he had been about to say, he was cut off by her tone.

Mercury had known that things were going sour with Cinder. He’d been watching her change ever since the Fall of Beacon, cataloging the progression of bruises and scorch marks Emerald collected in her training sessions. The way Emerald got quieter and quieter around her, mouth crumpling with hurt, and then with pain.

Mercury had known that things were going bad, but that was when he realized they needed to get out, even if it had taken Cinder burning her so badly to jump-start the whole process.

He looked over. Emerald was sitting on the floor in the nest of blankets. Her head was ducked down behind her knees so he couldn’t see her face, but her fingers were dug into the fabric of her pants, enough that her knuckles shone through as crescents. She’d started doing that in Salem’s base, after the fall of Beacon. Mercury had been hoping that she’d stop once they were away.

“I’m not with any of them,” he said. The words fell flat in the room, like they didn’t fit into the conversation they were having, and he didn't know why that would be. “This isn’t our war. We’re just here until we figure out how to get away.”

Emerald was quiet for another long moment, long enough that he thought she was going to call him on his bluff, demand to know the grand plan he didn’t have to deal with this. Then she crawled up onto the bed.

Mercury wasn’t one for touching. Contact was for fighting. Either you were hurting someone or getting hurt. But it had been easy enough to see how much Emerald had craved it, the way she’d followed Cinder around, living for the moments Cinder would brush a hand against her shoulder. Mercury had known better long before her age, but Emerald was desperate for it.

He wasn’t sure how to feel about how she seemed to have replaced Cinder with him. Instead of reflecting on that, he grit his teeth and bore it as she sank down on the mattress next to him.

She sat against the headboard, shoulder to shoulder with him, her own blanket around her shoulders. It wasn’t something they’d started when they first got to Salem’s base, sleeping in the same room. But it had happened soon after Cinder’s recovery, when she didn’t need Emerald anymore. With Tyrion prowling the halls at night, shrieking with laughter or anger, and Cinder furious and looking for an outlet, and Watts eyeing his legs and Emerald’s everything like he wanted to take them apart. Necessity, to keep them both alive, once it became clear that Cinder didn’t care anymore.

“She’s dead,” she whispered. It was impossible to tell if she sounded relieved or not.

In the darkness, he shifted so that his head was against hers. “Yeah.”

After another pause, she said, “Qrow was angry when he heard. About Raven.”

Yeah, well. They had never really expected him to be happy about them. Not after what they did to the Fall Maiden. He was surprised that Qrow hadn’t attacked them when Ruby and Xiao Long had dragged them here. What was one more thing for him to be mad about?

“He kept _watching_ you,” she whispered, and Mercury went cold. The idea of Ozpin’s disciple watching him while he was unconscious made his skin crawl. “I didn’t leave though.”

Mercury had learned not to trust anyone else before he’d learned anything else. No matter how nice Red wanted to act, no matter what Xiao Long claimed blood meant, he wasn’t trusting either of them as far as he could throw them.

But it made some of the tension in his chest loosen, to know that Emerald had been there keeping watch before he was able to wake up. It felt like that’s how it had always been, Mercury and Emerald just behind Cinder, too strong to touch. And it was still the pair of them now, even without her.

He found one of her ponytails, tugged on it lightly. Emerald drew in a shuddering breath and leaned closer against him, and they stared into the darkness together. They’d been through worse than this. Between the two of them, they would make it through this too.


	2. Volume 2: Yang is Upset

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was strange, to be back in Patch, back in their home. Everything was so familiar. It was like she’d stepped back into her childhood. The dissociation made Yang feel uncomfortable. It was hard to even think about things like what Mercury had told her, too. They didn’t talk about so many things under this roof. Yang hadn’t known about Raven for years, and even finding out had been an accident. There were just things that didn’t get talked about because they caused too much pain.
> 
> But things weren’t normal. There was a whole sibling in the other room that Yang hadn’t even known about, who Yang had been fighting with for over a year now, and even though it had been two days Yang couldn’t stop her mind from racing over the little they actually knew about Mercury and Emerald, trying to figure out if there was some hint that she could have missed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't expect this to take so long, I'm so sorry. I suck at transition chapters and this month in particular has been really hard personally, so I was struggling for inspiration. Here's hoping it'll be better going forward.

Yang shut the door without saying anything because she was a coward, and she was furious with herself for doing it.

Ruby was lingering in the hallway, and now that she wasn’t trying to put on a cheerful face she looked as uncomfortable as Yang felt. The shadows were falling over her, but Yang knew she was fidgeting. Ruby had a hard enough time sitting still when she was happy, of course she was wringing her hands now.

“Did he, um?” she didn’t seem able to finish the question. Yang understood. They didn’t really talk about Raven in this house.

“He confirmed it,” Yang said, still facing the door. Things were completely silent behind it. She could picture the pair of them trying to listen in to her and Ruby’s conversation, trying to figure out the best way to manipulate them into doing what they wanted. It was easy to imagine Emerald up against the other side of the door, listening in.

It was easy to imagine Emerald as she’d been the last two days as well, almost catatonic with grief, refusing to leave Mercury’s side even under threat. The only time they knew for sure that she’d slept was when Yang opened the door and she was passed out against the side of the bed, fingers pressed against the inside of Mercury’s wrist for his pulse. She’d jolted awake when the floorboard creaked and looked terrified to have slept at all, just as terrified as she’d been in the clearing when Cinder had appeared. Just as terrified as she’d looked when Yang had killed her.

Yang sighed. There was a knot of emotion tangled in her chest, making it hard to breathe. She’d been able to stave it off for the conversation (most of it, anyway), but she was going to have to deal with that soon.

Not now though. This had been the easy part compared to talking to the others about this.

Yang turned away from the door, and tried to smile at her sister. Her teeth ground in the motion, and she knew it came out more of a grimace.

“You hiding from Weiss? It won’t work; she’ll hunt you down.”

That wasn’t the real reason Ruby was there, and they both knew it. Her worry for Yang was written all over her face. But she still pouted, willing to pretend that this was the real reason she was lingering at the edge of Yang’s space, ready to step in if she was needed.

It was strange, to be back in Patch, back in their home. Everything was so familiar. It was like she’d stepped back into her childhood. The dissociation made Yang feel uncomfortable. It was hard to even think about things like what Mercury had told her, too. They didn’t talk about so many things under this roof. Yang hadn’t known about Raven for years, and even finding out had been an accident. There were just things that didn’t get talked about because they caused too much pain.

But things weren’t normal. There was a whole sibling in the other room that Yang hadn’t even known about, who Yang had been fighting with for over a year now, and even though it had been two days Yang couldn’t stop her mind from racing over the little they actually knew about Mercury and Emerald, trying to figure out if there was some hint that she could have missed.

Ruby shifted slightly. She was hugging herself, eyes sliding to the closed door.

Ruby had snuck out of their dorm room nearly every night of the Vytal Festival to visit Emerald. She’d been so secretive about it, and so smug every morning when she thought that no one had noticed. Yang had followed her out once, just to make sure that her baby sister wasn’t getting mixed up in anything, and seen them walking around the fair grounds at night, looking up at the stars. She’d left them alone after that. Ruby had deserved to have a first love.

She didn’t deserve to suffer for it now.

Yang stepped closer and wrapped her arms around Ruby. Ruby curled into her without hesitation.

“Do you regret going after them?” she asked. Ruby shook her head, as Yang had known she would. Ruby would always want to save everyone she could, and she wouldn’t regret it. Even these two.

“Do you?” she asked, voice small.

If she hadn’t gone with Ruby, she would never have known about all this. She would have gone the rest of her life probably- definitely, if Mercury had anything to do with it- not knowing that she had another sibling. Someone who knew about Raven. She would never have killed anyone.

Ruby’s cape still smelled like smoke, three days later. She’d been washing incessantly to get the smell off her skin, but they hadn’t had a chance to get it out of the fabric yet. That was how close Cinder had gotten to her.

If she hadn’t gone with Ruby, she wouldn’t have been there. She wouldn’t have been able to save Ruby, because Ruby would have gone anyway.

“No.” Yang would never, ever regret protecting her baby sister.

Ruby’s breath hitched once. She inhaled and held the breath in, struggling not to cry. Yang kept on holding onto her until they both felt like they would be able to face the others.

“Alright. We can’t hide forever.”

Ruby groaned, but she sounded more like herself. “Can’t we try?” Yang let out a chuckle she only half felt and finally release her sister.

“Let’s go face the music.”

Blake was hovering in the hallway, just in the shadows. Her eyes were luminescent in the dark. Her hands were fluttering uselessly around her waist, like she didn’t know where to put them. Yang scowled when she saw the expression on her face, because if _Blake_ was going to try to lecture her about running off Yang was going to have something to say about it.

But Blake’s face only pinched a little more and her eyes slid away from Yang. She ended up looking behind her, towards the stairs.

“He’s awake?” she asked quietly, instead of saying any of the things Yang had expected her to say.

Yang nodded shortly. Even if Blake wasn’t meeting her gaze, she was able to catch that. “We’re not going to talk to him tonight,” she said.

Blake didn’t argue with that either, only nodded slowly. Yang didn’t know how to interpret the expression on her face. Yang wasn’t sure that she wanted to. Ruby was the one who was good at forgiving, not her.

With the boy in her bed upstairs, she could see why the others were confused though.

“The others want to talk,” she said quietly.

“We had a feeling.” Yang had meant for the words to be dry, something close to a joke, but they emerged harsher than that, nearly sarcastic. Blake faltered; ears swiveling backwards. Ruby squeezed Yang’s hand once. Yang wasn’t sure if it was in comfort or a reprimand. She grimaced anyway. “Sorry.”

“It’s ok!” Blake said at once, which is what she said every time Yang said something cutting before she could stop herself. It had happened a lot since she had shown back up with Sun and a girl that Blake had described hesitantly as an old friend.

It wasn’t ok. Yang was trying to keep her temper under control, but the tension from the last few days was getting to her, and the wound of Blake leaving still felt just as fresh as when she’d been released by the medics and her teammate had been gone. That didn’t make it alright, no matter what Blake said.

She sighed, pretending she didn’t see the way Blake’s shoulders curled inward at the sound, and tried to smile at her.

“Let’s get this over with.”

Ilia was in the stairwell, arms crossed while she waited for them. Blake glared at her, but she didn’t look apologetic about it at all, only shrugged. Her gaze passed over Yang momentarily and went hard, but she didn’t comment. Yang had expected that too. They’d only been here for a little while, and Blake and Sun had been deliberately vague on Ilia’s past but it was already clear that she was fiercely loyal to Blake. It was good. Blake needed more people who were willing to stand by her. But it was also deeply annoying, because Yang had been willing to stand through anything with her, and Blake…hadn’t.

Ruby hesitated at the foot of the stairs, looking at the kitchen. She bit her lip apprehensively.

Yang knocked her shoulder against Ruby’s and stepped forwards. A few seconds later she felt fingers creep into hers and heard footsteps hurry to catch up.

Yang didn’t look at Blake, and kept moving.

Everyone else was packed into their kitchen. Ilia melted past Nora and Ren until she came to a stop by Sun, sitting on the counter, and scrambled up to join him. Sun whispered something to soft to hear, and Ilia tried to push him onto the floor. Blake glared at both of them until they settled, Sun rubbing sheepishly at the back of his neck.

Jaune, Ren, and Nora were clustered into a knot by the table, looking as upset as could be expected. Weiss was halfway between them and the boy, watching Ruby with a worried expression.

Ozpin- it had to be Ozpin wearing that body this time, his gaze was too cold for anything else- was sitting at the head of the table. Yang didn’t care for that at all, the way it made it even more obvious that he was holding court.

But Yang’s eyes went to the chair to the right. Qrow was slouched into it, eyes intent as he watched them. The look on his face said he knew how life went too well to have put any hope into something this important. He tilted his head at Yang anyway.

She spread her arms.

“Congratulations. It’s a boy.”

The announcement produced an explosion of noise around the room.

In one smooth movement, mainly disguised under the cacophony, Qrow snagged the whiskey in front of him off the table and began drinking straight from the bottle.

Yang could see Weiss’s mouth tuck down sharply, and remembered the way she’d reacted when they’d smuggled alcohol into Beacon, the things she’d let slip about her mother while they were on the road, before Blake had come back, when Yang had recovered enough from Beacon to let go of despair and slip straight into anger.

And she couldn’t do anything about Mercury apparently being her brother, or about the way everyone else was looking at her, but she could snatch the bottle out of his reach. Qrow swore and glared at her. Yang glared back.

“That’s not helpful!” 

Qrow yanked it out of her hands. “It’s helpful to me,” he said flatly.

Nora’s hands were white-knuckled on her hammer. “You shouldn’t have gone off alone,” she told them.

“Well we invited you, and you didn’t seem very excited about it,” Yang retorted, and then everyone was yelling at the same time.

Jaune and Nora was shouting about everything Mercury and Emerald had done to them when they’d attacked Beacon. Ren was Ren-shouting, which was all the anger of shouting without the volume, detailing what they’d done after, the whole past year of showing up out of the blue and attacking them as they tried to make their way to Haven and back.

Sun was trying to make people calm down; Ilia was arguing something that was completely lost under the rest of the racket.

Blake was watching her. Weiss was sitting perfectly straight-backed at the table, hands folded in her lap. Her expression was perfectly blank except for the bloodless crease of her lips.

Ozpin was watching them all like they were science experiments that were reacting in interesting ways.

Qrow was drinking.

“This could be a trap and you led them right into your home, they could have killed you-”

Underneath all the noise, Ruby’s breath hitched tearfully. Yang’s hair ignited with Aura.

“Well if it was a trap, it wasn’t one that Cinder knew about,” she snapped, and everyone went quiet.

Yang had spent the last few days wishing people would just stop _talking_ at her, but she wished someone would say something now.

She didn’t regret it. She hadn’t been lying to Ruby. She would never regret being there for her sister. But she could still feel the phantom movements, could still feel the impact her fist made when it hit Cinder’s chest. She could feel the way her ribs had given under the metal, the vibrations jarring all the way to her shoulder.

Yang looked at all of them. There wasn’t a single person in this room that she didn’t love. But if Mercury was Raven’s son, that meant he was family. Maybe not as much as the people in this room, but. Family.

“This is our house,” she said clearly, making sure to catch Ozpin’s eye as she did so. “And I say he’s staying here. I’m not asking your permission for that any more than Ruby was asking for it before she went to help them.”

“So what,” Jaune demanded angrily, and Yang could understand his anger but she had too much on her plate to deal with right now, “Just because he’s your brother, he gets to-”

“We didn’t bring them here because he was my brother!” she snapped, “We brought him here because they have information about Salem and we need to know it.”

“We agreed that it wasn’t worth the risk,” Ozpin said quietly. Yang felt bad for Oscar; the kid seemed nice, and he didn’t deserve to get dragged into this. He absolutely didn’t deserve to have to share his body with Ozpin.

Mom had said she shouldn’t trust Ozpin blindly. Mom had said a lot of things- had been mostly talk, after all those years of searching- but that hadn’t rang false for Yang.

“You decided that,” she pointed out, “So we didn’t ask you to come along.” He frowned, the movement slight and displeased, and she felt a spark of annoyance. “Lemme make one thing clear: I didn’t sign up for any of this for _you_. I’ve been upfront about that from the beginning.” A small movement, too old for a child’s face. Something close to a flinch. “I don’t follow you. I follow Ruby.”

Ruby looked unhappy at that. She probably hadn’t wanted attention to be focused back on her. But Yang wanted to make this clear, because Ozpin had said they needed this to be able to defeat Salem, but Yang didn’t care about any of that. She was content to follow Ruby because she knew that Ruby had a good heart. Ruby would always try to do that right thing; Yang could trust in that. She couldn’t trust Ozpin, and his insistence that he was telling them everything while he was still disappearing with Qrow to make plans didn’t sit well with her. She didn’t like how they were young enough to not be involved in the planning, but apparently old enough for the war.

“Whether you think it was worth the risk or not, they’re here now. They have information that they’re willing to tell us. It’s information we need. And Cinder is out of the picture now,” she said, and her throat went dry around the words. She refused to let that stop her. “So. You’re welcome. And if everyone could stop talking about what _should_ have happened and start dealing with the current situation; that would be great.”

Qrow grimaced. Blake went a little pale, but she did it silently, and Yang didn’t think anyone else even noticed.

Jaune was shaking. Yang knew that she should do something about that. Jaune was her friend, he was closer to her than family, certainly closer than family she’d known nothing about three days ago, but…

“You know what he did,” he said, voice low with anger, “After Beacon, after _Pyrrha_ -” His voice cracked around her name. “You want us to forgive them?”

“I haven’t forgiven him,” Yang told him, “Either of them. I would never ask you to. But they reached out to us, offered us information about Salem, and they’re here now. We’ll keep them under watch, we’ll find out more about what we’re fighting. That’s two-” she hesitated, then forced out, “-that’s _three_ people altogether that we don’t have to fight anymore. It wouldn’t make sense to turn that down now.”

And he was her brother, Yang thought, and she’d known as long as she’d understood what Raven had done to her family that she would never, ever turn her back on her family.

If she ever saw Mom again, she was going to have words with her.

“They asked for help without telling us about that.” Every eye turned towards Ruby as she spoke up at last. “It was my choice.”

“It was both of our choice,” Yang said flatly.

Jaune was shaking. It looked like it was rage at first glance, but Yang had gotten better at watching in the months that Ruby had been gone, when she’d barely been talking and had done even less. There were tears in his eyes.  

“Fine. Obviously it doesn’t matter what we have to say about it. Just- fine.” He turned on his heel and stalked out of the room. Ren and Nora looked at each other, then turned to follow.

“If they try anything while they’re here, we’re shutting it down,” Nora told Ruby, voice hard. Ren didn’t say anything at all. And then they were gone too.

“Um…” Oscar said, and it was Oscar this time. Yang could tell by the way that he slouched in the chair. He looked like he was confused but able to read the room enough to know he didn’t want to ask about it.

“I’ll talk to them,” Ruby announced, and left.

Yang really, really didn’t like being left behind with the pieces.

Weiss’s mouth was a thin, neat line. She hadn’t looked this closed off since their first few weeks in Beacon. Yang ached, but before she could think of what to say Weiss nodded once and left the room, back perfectly straight.

Blake hesitated by the door until Sun hopped off the counter and put his hand on her shoulder. Yang opened her mouth but didn’t know what to say.

“So, how do you want to do this?”

Yang blinked at him.

“You said that we’d be keeping an eye on them, right?” He gave her a thumbs up and a sunny grin, “You can count on us.”

Ilia didn’t look too happy, but if she ever did Yang hadn’t seen it. Blake wouldn’t quite meet Yang’s eyes, but she nodded too. That shouldn’t have hurt. That _shouldn’t_ have hurt.

Sun was still looking at her, and he was trying to help out, so Yang tore her eyes away and said, “Yeah. Thanks.”

His eyes crinkled when he smiled, and even though Yang knew how horrible this whole conversation was, he still looked like he meant it. “We can figure it out tomorrow. Don’t worry. They’ll come around.”

Yang wasn’t sure if he was talking about Jaune, Nora, and Ren, or if he meant Mercury and Emerald. Qrow made a soft, doubtful sound that meant he didn’t believe it either way. Sun gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. Yang could see how Blake could depend on him so strongly. It didn’t make her feel any better.

Slowly, the others trickled out. Qrow looked up from where he’d been lying face-down on the table.

“Can I have my booze back now?”

Yang sighed. Dad had tried to stop their uncle drinking when they were young. It had never worked. Ruby and Yang had even tried it a few times as children. “He has to want it himself,” Dad told Yang, the one time he sat her down to discuss it with her when he caught her hiding bottles. Yang hadn’t been satisfied with that at all. She still wasn’t, but. She understood it better now.

Slowly, Yang sat down at the table with him. “Only this one bottle,” she said in warning, “No more.”

Qrow grumbled but muttered, “Fine.”

Before Yang handed it over, she pulled his glass onto her side of the table and refilled it. She handed back the bottle. She kept the glass.

Qrow blinked at it fuzzily.

“Your dad’s gonna kill me if you get hooked on this stuff."

Yang took a drink just to watch him grimace. “Yeah, probably.”

It burned going down more than she’d expected. It wasn’t like she’d never drunk before. She just hadn’t done it recently. It was hard to party at Beacon when her baby sister was right there, and Weiss’s expression turned stony every time she saw alcohol. Blake and her had snuck out of Beacon and into the city a few times to paint the town red, but that had been ages ago. They’d stopped a few weeks before the Vytal Festival to focus on the competition, and that had been the end of that.

It had been the end of a lot of things.

Yang almost wanted to take another drink to try not to think about that, but she drew the line at drinking as a coping mechanism. The reason for why had stopped staring miserably at her cup and had gone back to drinking.

“He didn’t mention it until I brought it up.” He looked up at her. Yang’s grip on the cup was white knuckled. Flesh hand. Experimentation with her new arm had proven that holding something while she was angry led to a lot of broken glass. “And I think he would have lied about it if he wasn’t still concussed.”

“And?”

“It can’t be a lie if he didn’t want to tell me in the first place.”

And that hurt. Why did it hurt? Mercury had been a jackass since nearly day one. It had been funny, at first, but however close Emerald had been with Ruby he hadn’t really interacted with her. Had he known about her even then?

“It will be good.” Uncle Qrow interrupted her train of thought, and she tried a little too desperately to focus on that. “To have information about what she’s planning next. I’ll ask the kids tomorrow-”

“Mercury.” He looked at her. Yang kept staring straight ahead so she didn’t have to meet his eyes. “You can ask Mercury. We’re supposed to keep Emerald out of it.”

He kept on staring at her. Yang took another drink out of her cup, and tried not to acknowledge how it really _was_ easier to drink than to meet his gaze. The thought alone was enough to make her put it down again. Yang didn’t run from her problems. That wasn’t her.

“We’re supposed to,” Qrow echoed, with just the faintest hint of anger. “Are we talking about things we’re _supposed_ to be doing right now, because going off on your own-”

“Ruby was the one who was planning on going off on her own,” Yang interrupted, “I made sure that she didn’t. You can’t honestly expect her to hear that someone might need help and just sit here.” When he only glared at the table, because he _did_ know that, just as well as her, she added, “They think that we’re going to torture her.”

Yang remembered the way horror had slashed through her when she realized why Mercury was speaking about his partner like that, that he was so convinced that they would be willing to hurt them that he was doing preemptive damage control. Qrow’s expression didn’t even change.

“Of course they do.”

“And we’re not going to, are we?” Yang prompted, when he didn’t say anything more.

Qrow sighed, the noise sharp and aggravated, but shook his head.

“No.”

He’d been part of the rotating watch in her room while they were waiting for him to wake up and explain himself. When Yang had come in to replace him, he’d been staring at Mercury with an indecipherable, cold look and Emerald had been shaking with tension. She’d looked relieved to see _Yang_.

“So it’s not really a problem, is it?” she snapped. Qrow shot her a look.

“You’re not making any friends, you know that?” she recoiled. Qrow rubbed his face. “Sorry. It’s…it’s a shitty situation. You know.” Yang crossed her arms, but she nodded slightly in acknowledgement. “I need to ask him what he knows. You know that.”

Yang thought back to the look on his face when he’d told her to keep Emerald out of it. “He’ll tell you.”

“Fine. I’ll leave the girl alone.” It was as close to an apology as she was likely to get. Yang tucked her arms closer into her ribs. She felt cold. She felt alone, which was worse, especially when there were so many people around.

 “I’m not going to be like Mom,” she said. Qrow looked at her, and Yang could see that in her mind he was already half in a bottle. “I can’t.”

“You’re not like her,” Qrow said quietly.

Mom had made the decision to choose between two families; that was the nicest way that anyone had been able to describe it to her. That was the way that Qrow had described it to her. Her tribe and her team. Blood and love. But she’d still left her blood behind; her brother and her daughter (and even- apparently- a son). Yang didn’t want to make the same mistakes that Raven had. She didn’t want to leave anyone behind.

But.

Mercury and Emerald had been willing to defect before any of this came to light. He hadn’t even wanted to tell her. Emerald hadn’t even known. They’d wanted to get out without even using that as a manipulation tactic.

Maybe Yang didn’t have to choose.

She looked at her uncle, who was staring at the bottle on the table in front of him like he was hoping it would actually solve something for him this time.

“Please don’t drink anymore tonight,” she said tiredly. Qrow wasn’t going to stick to one bottle. They both knew it. He still flapped a hand at her and mumbled something about having made a promise.

I need you, she wanted to say, anger bubbling up from her stomach into her throat, I don’t know what to do and you’re my _uncle_ , I need you. But Qrow looked wrecked. He’d looked wrecked ever since they’d finished patching up Mercury and Yang had told him what he’d said.

Yang poured her glass of whiskey down the drain before she left.

Blake was waiting for her in the hallway again.

Yang bit back a groan.

“I’m not here to yell at you,” she said hurriedly, like she was worried that Yang was going to bite her head off. “I just…I just had a few questions.”

Yang leaned against the wall. “Let’s hear them.”

“Is this…” Blake’s ears were swiveled backwards. It made Yang’s stomach twist. “Is this because you want to know about your mom?”

It hit like a punch to the gut.  Yang would have reared back if she wasn’t already up against the wall.

“I know how much meeting her means to you-”

“I already met her.” Blake blinked, shocked, and Yang realized that she hadn’t told Blake about the bandit camp.

“I- oh. I didn’t know.” Blake sounded just as unnerved as Yang felt. They’d shared nearly everything at Beacon, once they’d found out that Blake was a faunus. Everything. Blake knew things about her that even Ruby might not know. She was the only one of Yang’s friends who knew how much finding Raven had meant to her.

She didn’t know- no one knew- how _disappointing_ it had been when she finally did it.

“Yeah,” she said, and she couldn’t make herself say any more.

Blake rubbed her arms. Maybe she felt cold too, in the same way Yang did, in a way that had nothing to do with the air and everything to do with the empty space at her side.

“If you’d come to me,” she said in a small voice, “I would have come with you.” Like she hadn’t run out on Yang already.

Yang had about a million things she wanted to say to that, and none of them where helpful.

But Jaune, Ren, and Nora were hurting in another room, with Ruby trying to do damage control, and Weiss had the same expression she’d worn for the first month at Beacon, and Qrow was drinking himself into a stupor in the kitchen. There were two enemies- and they didn't even feel like former _enemies_ to Yang, how was she supposed to do this?- upstairs half-dead and half- _related_ _to her_. And Blake was hugging herself and wouldn’t look her in the eye. Maybe she wasn’t saying it like she hadn’t run out on Yang before. Maybe she was saying it like she was trying to make up for it.

Yang breathed in. Breathed out.

“I’ll keep that in mind for next time,” she said. Yang didn't run from her problems. That wasn't who she was. But she still left Blake in the hallway, and somehow, that hurt the worst of everything else that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for all the comments. I reread each and every one on my bad days. You guys helped me through. Please let me know what you think.
> 
>  
> 
> I hope you all have a great new year, and that 2020 is everything you need! (Maybe this year we'll even see the murder children in a gosh-damn scene lol) Visit me anytime @shitlinguistssay.tumblr.com


	3. Volume 3: Awkward Breakfast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If they were any kind of competent, this would be when she started asking about Salem. Right when balancing between doing him the favor of keeping him alive and making it clear how much he could hurt if he didn’t answer questions. Mercury waited for her to start, tension seething under his skin, but they were apparently just as unskilled in interrogation as they’d been at spotting spies at Beacon, because Xiao Long just kept working, frowning in concentration.
> 
> Mercury is confused, bordering on dismayed, by the lack of professionalism in Ozpin's base.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to warn all you lovely people, this series is going to get incredibly self-indulgent in pretty short order. Just so you know. I'm going to try to keep it gradual enough that it isn't too OOC in the context of the story.

They slept in shifts. That was habit now too, after months in Salem’s base. Mercury was glad for it now, because it had prepared them for this. Whatever Xiao Long had said, they needed to be ready for anything. So he slept first and then Emerald, propping each other up, eyes and ears open, ready for when someone decided to try their luck. He was the one who was awake when the darkness melted back into thin sunlight and footsteps began to approach the door. They knocked, which made absolutely no sense, but it gave him time to shove Emerald unceremoniously off the bed and back into her pile of blankets, so he appreciated it.

Away from him was safer. The idea that they couldn’t use Mercury and Emerald against each other was dead in the water, but it was still safer to keep some distance. Maybe they were stupid enough that they would forget about it. They were stupid enough to leave them unguarded at night (stupid enough to rescue them even when it went against orders, who _did_ that), so anything was possible.

It was Xiao Long who poked her head into the room, blinking as Emerald threw herself at the bed with blood in her eye. “You’re both up,” she said, and Emerald stopped trying to strangle him before she really started. “How are you feeling?”

She looked a little wrong-footed. Like she didn’t know what to do with them. Their continued survival in Ozpin’s base was contingent on her not looking like that.

“I’ll live.” He nudged Emerald, whose face had gone blank at Xiao Long’s arrival. She nodded slowly in agreement.

From the way Xiao Long frowned, maybe going for flippant hadn’t been the best route. “We’ll check how you’re healing later,” she told him firmly, “After breakfast.” At his side, Emerald perked up, as she always did when food was mentioned. Xiao Long might have said more, but then Red shoved her way into the room, precariously balancing a tray.

“Ren made pancakes! Nora ate all the Red Sap syrup _again_ , but there was some jam left in the cupboard…”

“Hello, Ruby.” Emerald had risen to her feet. She wouldn’t meet Ruby’s eyes, instead she was fidgeting with the long part of her hair.

Mercury knew that this was part of what they’d discussed. Emerald was going to play the part of a repentant soul, trying to make up for what they’d done. It had been easy enough for her to make Ruby like her before. She just had to work at it a little harder this time.

But from the way Ruby Rose went still, just for a fraction of a second, hesitancy flickering over her face, she might know it too, and they hadn’t accounted for that.

But then she smiled again, just as too-bright as he remembered, and he could almost think he imagined it.

“Hi, Emerald! I brought enough for you too!” She plopped the tray down in Mercury’s lap and began passing out plates like she hadn’t hesitated at all before answering.

She’d brought four plates, and four sets of silverware.

Xiao Long caught his eye. “We thought we’d have breakfast in here,” she said in an airy tone he didn’t believe for a second, “It’s getting a little… crowded in the kitchen.” There was a tightness around her eyes. Reading into that, he guessed the others were pissed that they’d gone after them. Almost guiltily, she added, “And people thought it was best if someone was here with you.”

Why was she acting like she wanted permission? Was this some kind of power game? Were they trying to lull Mercury and Emerald into some false sense of security? As if they didn’t know exactly what kind of position they were in.

If they didn’t eat in here, someone else would come watch them, he was sure. He would much rather it be the only two people he was reasonably sure weren’t going to kill them. “It’s your place,” he pointed out, exchanging a look with Emerald. She, at least, was on the same page as him. “You can eat wherever you want.”

She nodded shortly, looking vindicated. “Damn right I can.” Red just looked amused.

If it were anyone else, the amount of food that Ruby Rose had brought would have been ridiculous. But when there was enough food, Emerald ate like she was making up for lost time, and Ruby was apparently the only person who could rival her. Mercury was lucky to get any at all.

Xiao Long didn’t even try. She winked at him as the three of them scrambled to get food and then stole three pancakes off her sister’s plate.

“Little sisters,” she said to Mercury like it explained everything, and stole three pancakes from the top of Ruby’s stack. When Ruby whined, she ruffled her hair. It was so sickeningly sweet he could feel his teeth ache.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he told her flatly, slapping Emerald’s hand away when it inched towards his plate. For some reason, this made Xiao Long laugh so hard that she choked on her pancake, giving Red a chance to steal the others back.

Ruby had kicked the door open when she came in, and no one had bothered to close it. In the dim space of the hall, Mercury could see Qrow leaning against the wall. He was watching them all, the four of them crammed around plates on the bed. Mercury froze.

There was something about the way he was doing it that made Mercury think of his old man. Something about the way his arms were crossed, the tightness of his mouth, and the way his displeasure was aimed at Mercury.

He met Mercury’s eyes for a brief moment, and his lips thinned. Then he pushed off the wall and disappeared further into the house.

Emerald was deep in conversation with Red, or she was pretending to be at least. Rose hadn’t noticed a thing, as far as he could tell. But Xiao Long was looking down the hall after Qrow. She scowled after him, then turned back to Mercury, making a show of rolling her eyes.

“He’s being dramatic,” she said, under her sister’s chatter, “Don’t mind him.”

Mercury didn’t think Ozpin’s best lieutenant was something to roll his eyes at, particularly if he was feeling dramatic. Not when Mercury was sitting in his base and minus both legs. Xiao Long seemed to think that she’d gotten Oz and his group to back off, but even if Emerald was safe, Mercury was living on borrowed time.

He knew better than to say that though. Instead he turned and devoted his attention to rescuing his last pancake from Emerald’s clutches, pretending he didn’t see Xiao Long watching him thoughtfully.

He thought while he ate. Salem knew about Qrow. Tyrian had mentioned him a few times. He’d fought _Cinder_ to a standstill once, and all the times Mercury had gone up against him, it had been him _and_ Emerald, and they still hadn’t won. If Qrow hadn’t decided they were children and that he couldn’t be bothered killing them, Mercury wasn’t sure they would have survived. Qrow was good. He was really good.

And Mercury had a nasty feeling he didn’t believe in kindness or second chances as much as Ruby Rose seemed to.

They would have to step very carefully around him, if they were going to survive this.

Once breakfast was over Xiao Long broke out the first aid kit, Red and Emerald hovering on either side of the bed.

Mercury didn’t like people staring at him. He especially didn’t like it now, when he was trapped on the bed. But he couldn’t fight these two off and make them still want to help him at the same time, so Mercury swallowed his resentment down and turned to Emerald, adopting a stricken expression, pretending his skin wasn’t crawling with revulsion at the thought of Blondie figuring out every way she could take him out right now, when he’d be hard put to do anything about it.

“Tell me doc, will I ever walk again?”

Emerald punched him in the arm.

“That’s not funny!” she hissed, and Mercury knew her well enough to know that this wasn’t part of her act. He rubbed his arm and shrugged.

“You’re no fun anymore,” he informed her, but the joke fell flat. He _didn’t_ know if he would ever walk again, because his legs were destroyed and he wasn’t going to get another pair anytime soon, if he ever got one again. His stomach soured at the thought.

He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of figuring out what he was thinking about. He looked back at Xiao Long and Red, adding, “And I can patch myself up. I don’t need help.” He’d been treating his own injuries for longer than he could remember. He knew how to dress a wound better than Emerald, and probably better than these two, who for all that they were about the same age didn’t act like it.

Mercury needed them to keep him and Emerald around. He didn’t need their medical care. He sure as hells didn’t need their _pity_.

Xiao Long looked up at his voice. She had her Raven face on again, assessing. The gears in her arm clicked as she clenched her fingers. She looked like she was about to say something, and not happily.

Then she turned back the kit. Mercury was unreasonably relieved that her eyes were still lilac and not the shade of red that made her look just like her mother. “You’re getting help anyway,” she said in a short, flat tone. Then, not looking up from the kit, “Ruby, why don’t you take the plates down to the kitchen?”

“Oh, ok.”

She started gathering them up. Xiao Long was still focused on the kit. Without shifting his body, Mercury leaned over and pinched Emerald on the arm.

She glared at him. He glared back. She knew what they had to do. They’d discussed it already. This was how they were going to survive. She couldn’t do anything for him here. So she stood again, the annoyance in her face being forced down until it was something shy and sweet.

“Let me help you with that.”

Red looked up, and the hesitance she’d been wearing before slipped over her face again.

“Oh, that’s ok. I can carry it, you probably want to stay with Mercury anyway-”

But the question had flustered her so much that she dropped the plate she was holding. Emerald grabbed it before it hit the ground, and that put her in Red’s space. “I don’t mind.” She wasn’t looking directly at Ruby, instead hugging the plate close as she shrank in on herself. She’d even managed to look a little flushed. He hated to admit it, but this was something Emerald was better at then him. Hells, she was so good at this he wouldn’t have known it was a con if they hadn’t planned it together. “I’d like to help. Please.”

For a second, Red frowned. Then her expression cleared again. “…Alright.”

And just like that they were the only two in the room.

“That was a neat little way to get her out of the room,” Xiao Long said without looking at him. Mercury opened his mouth to deny it, but she kept talking. “We should have tried that before you woke up.”

Mercury spend one glorious moment picturing what Emerald would do if one of these two pinched her. But then it would have ended their little sojourn here, so it was probably for the best that it hadn’t happened.

She made him strip off the shirt they’d dressed him in. Mercury didn’t remember much of his fight with Cinder. Unlike his last fight with Marcus, which he remembered with perfect clarity, this was a blur. He should have remembered getting this hurt though, he thought, looking at the burns and bruises across his torso.

If his old man had seen him take a beating this hard… Just another reason to be glad he wasn’t around anymore. It was fucking pathetic, even if he had been up against Cinder.

His legs were gone. It wasn't the first time he'd thought it (it wasn't even the first time he'd woken up in this position) but it hit him all at once. He wasn't going to be getting out of this bed anytime soon, and if he needed to- if Qrow decided to do something more lasting than just scowl in the hallway, if Emerald needed backup- then he was shit out of luck because he wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.

Xiao Long scowled down at the mess, lips pursed.

“Jaune should be looking at this,” she admitted, “He can heal with his aura. Kind of, he hasn’t really explained it. But…” she sighed.

But he’d refused? So the person whose girlfriend they’d killed didn’t want to help him out? Finally, someone in this house who made sense.

“I can’t imagine why,” he drawled, and she transferred her scowl to him.

“You don’t exactly make it easy!”

“Look, I don’t need his help.  I don’t even need yours. I can take care of myself.” That was all he’d ever done, what he was best at. Better than this fumbling, trying to keep Emerald from killing herself from stupidity, which was how he’d gotten into this mess.

Xiao Long opened her mouth again, then shut it, looking frustrated.

“You don’t have to though.” And Mercury didn’t know what that meant, why she was so upset at _him_. He could only stare at her blankly, because who else was going to do it?

Something changed in her expression. Mercury thought it looked a little like pity, but that couldn’t be right. She wasn’t looking at any of his scars.

Huffing, she turned back to his torso. “That’s not how we do things here,” she muttered, and cracked open the bottle of salve. It was on the tip of his tongue to say that was how he did things, _anywhere_. But then she started cleaning the burns, and he just about swallowed his tongue to keep from making any noise.

When he was tending his own injuries, he had something else to focus on other than the pain. Now he didn’t. He wouldn’t let himself show how much it hurt when Xiao Long started prodding at the burns. He’d given Emerald way too much shit to start acting like a baby himself. She’d never let him hear the end of it, and it _would_ get back to her somehow.

“Here, start unrolling the bandages,” she ordered at last, shoving them into his hands when he twitched for the umpteenth time, “Gods, you’re worse than Ruby.”

He felt more than a little offended by that. But it did help to have something to focus on. Something besides trying to calculate how long it would take to get out of this bed. Something that wouldn’t remind him that he couldn’t get out anyway.

If they were any kind of competent, this would be when she started asking about Salem. Right when balancing between doing him the favor of keeping him alive and making it clear how much he could hurt if he didn’t answer questions. Mercury waited for her to start, tension seething under his skin, but they were apparently just as unskilled in interrogation as they’d been at spotting spies at Beacon, because Xiao Long just kept working, frowning in concentration.

She looked the way Raven did in some of his memories, when he watched her poring over information for hits with Marcus, the few times she’d run jobs with him.

Mercury forced that memory out of his head. Xiao Long would get with the program eventually, and then they’d get down to business. Everyone wanted something. Maybe they were waiting for Ozpin to decide how to go forward, maybe Xiao Long didn’t care about what Salem had planned, but Mercury knew what she _did_ care about.

He knew about Raven. Maybe not a lot, but from the sound of it he knew more than she did. It stood to reason that she wanted to know more.

That had to be what she wanted. There was no other reason she’d be keeping the others off his back.

That was good, he told himself, even if it didn’t feel particularly good. It meant that he had something to barter with. It meant that she had a reason to keep him and Emerald alive.

“Have to say, you’re better at this then I thought,” he admitted, because it was too quiet in the room. They’d been students in Beacon when they’d been spying on them, which said something, but when spying on them all in their classes, the Heiress and Belladonna had been the two who cared about their academic studies. These two had let their combat skills do the talking.

“Someone had to take care of Ruby,” she said, with a quirk of the lips that wanted to be a smile but came out too bitter, “Dad was usually working.”

“You clean up all your sister’s messes, Blondie?” he asked, picking the roll apart idly.

“She’s my little sister. That’s what I’m supposed to do.”

“How’s she going to learn if you don’t let the lesson stick?” Gods, no wonder she still acted like so much of a child.

Xiao Long didn’t like that. She sat back, first aid kit still in hand, and she’d started frowning in a way that said she was halfway back to angry. “Is that how your father taught you?” she demanded, “Is that the training you were talking about before?”

Mercury forgot that he needed this girl to want him to stay alive. He went cold, then hot with anger, hands curling into the bandages. “That’s none of your business!” This time when she glared at him, he glared back, lip curling into a sneer. “Or is this part of the interrogation, Blondie? I didn’t realize it had anything to do with Salem.”

Xiao Long swore and stood in one jerky movement, kicking the chair. She stomped over to the wall and kicked that too. Mercury kept his eyes on her, but groped for the remains of his leg.

Only Xiao Long didn’t attack. She just stood there, back to him, breathing like she was trying to get her temper under control. Her hands were clenched into fists, but they stayed down by her waist. “I shouldn’t have asked like that,” she said after a long time, still facing the wall, the words brittle with tension.

“You shouldn’t have asked at all,” he shot back, even as his grip on the piece of metal tightened. It would be stupid to attack her. It would be a stupid thing to do even if he wasn’t a prisoner in the middle of their base, but it would be unbelievably, profoundly stupid to do it now. That didn’t stop every nerve in his body shrieking to get in the first blow, that if he waited and had to draw second blood he would have already lost the fight.

“Alright.” She then turned back around. Righting the chair, she sat in it again and reached for the kit. Then she just went back to treating the burns like nothing had happened.

What the fuck.

But she didn’t keep fighting and she didn’t take away the kit, and he supposed those were the most important things. Reluctantly, he let go of the prosthetic again.

Xiao Long’s eyes tracked the movement. Instead of commenting on it, she only remarked, “So talking about your dad’s off limits, huh?”

Oh, was he allowed to have off limit things? That was good to know. “Yes,” he said shortly, because if things could be off limits, then that definitely was.

“Fine. Then saying shit like that about Ruby is off limits too. She’s the reason you’re here. No one else trusted you enough to risk it.”

Mercury gritted his teeth because he _knew that_ , but he didn’t like being reminded how close it had been to them against Cinder alone, because even with Xiao Long’s help he hadn’t been able to touch her. Cinder would have killed them both if she hadn’t underestimated Xiao Long.

And he knew he should just shut up and not ruin everything now. Emerald was depending on him to not fuck everything up. But his mouth had always run faster than his brain, and before he could stop himself he was saying, “You’d have let your own brother die, Blondie? That’s cold for you people, isn’t it?”

He had a split second to realize he’d fucked up. Her aura exploded out of her, streaming through her hair. Her eyes flicked to red so fast he couldn’t even see the change. She tried to clench her hand into a fist, but the kit was in the way.

The kit exploded. Plastic shards rained down on the bed from where her hand had snapped it.

“I didn’t know you were my brother!” And she sounded furious, but her expression made it look like she was in pain. “I didn’t- I wouldn’t have-” Her jaw snapped shut again. Mercury stared, filing away the expression on her face. She was actually upset about it. Why? There hadn’t been any way for her to know that he was Raven’s kid too, and it wasn’t like knowing had stopped _him_. What was wrong with these people?

“Shit, Blondie, it was a joke.”

“If that was a joke, Emerald was right. It isn’t funny.” She glared at him. Mercury glared back, because even if they were at the mercy of these Beacon idiots didn’t mean he had to let them think he was weak. “You should have told me.”

“It didn’t matter.”

“Of course it mattered!” she snapped. “You’re my brother.”

“Only half.”

That made her glare harder. “ _Ruby_ is my half-sister,” she grit out, like that had to have anything to do with them. And it effectively ended that argument, not because she’d convinced him, but because she’d made it clear that she wasn’t going to hear anything against Ruby, and Mercury had used up his suicidal remarks for the day.

“What was I supposed to do? Just walked into Ozpin’s office, ‘excuse me, but we’ve spent the better part of a year working for Salem, please ignore that while you dismantle the rest of her plans'.”

“Well that’s what you’re doing now, isn’t it?” she pointed out, “It would have saved us some time at least.”

Mercury opened his mouth to retort and realized that that was, in fact, the exact thing that they’d done. Knowing that only made him more furious. He glared to the side, and the first thing he saw was the legs that he couldn’t replace.

He couldn’t afford to keep arguing. Emerald couldn’t afford it if he kept arguing.

Xiao Long started picking up the pieces of the kit. After a moment, she grumbled. “You might think Ruby’s weak, but she isn’t.”

“I don’t think she’s weak.” Naïve to a fault, and hopelessly optimistic, but not weak. “She beat Cinder at Beacon.” They hadn’t seen what that had done to her, but Mercury had.  A weak person wouldn’t have been able to do that.

Xiao Long kept her eyes on her work.

“Good.” Her tone made it sound like she didn’t think it was good at all. Then, holding a hand out for the bandages, she changed topics completely. “I told them to keep Emerald out of it. They’ll leave her alone.”

Mercury didn’t trust that would buy them more than time, but he did believe that Xiao Long had told them. She’d laid out the terms for him, and for as long as they were willing to humor her Emerald would be safe.

“…Thank you.” That was what nice, repentant people said, right?

Yang’s eyes flicked to him. She almost smiled. "That didn’t hurt too much to say, did it?”

“I don’t know. I better not risk saying it again.”

She did grin at that, just a little, before sobering. “You’re going to be watched during the day,” she said quietly, “That was a condition of you staying.” They’d expected that. He nodded. “And you’re going to have to answer questions about Salem.”

Well, no shit. That was what they’d said they’d been willing to do. They’d known from the second they’d pinned the note to Red’s scythe that information was the only thing that would keep them alive.

“But I told them that you’d be the one answering the questions.” And as long as they followed through, Mercury and Emerald might even make it through this. Survival was what they excelled at. Emerald had survived the streets, and Mercury had survived his father. They would survive this too, even if they did end up interrogating Mercury. Even if he was trapped in their base.

Xiao Long was watching him carefully. “I already told you,” she said as if reading his mind (and Mercury hoped to all the gods he didn’t believe in that that wasn’t a Semblance anyone here had), “That’s not how we do things here. Now let me finish looking at your side; it’ll be a pain if it gets infected.”

Mercury stared at her, but aside from the twist of her mouth there was no indication they’d been anywhere close to fighting before. She went back to treating the wounds, and didn’t ask any questions about Salem or even Raven, and Mercury went back to pretending that things made sense.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am very dissatisfied with where this ends, but if I did the whole chapter as I planned it I would have to write at least a whole other scene and also it would be longer than the first two chapters combined. I mostly am a go-as-it-goes kind of writer, but the AESTHETIC. And I've been dragging my feet about posting this so long; I just want to move on (to dragging my feet about the next chapter).
> 
> Thanks for all the comments. There are so many characters in RWBY (and crammed into the Xiao-Long Rose house in this fic in particular) and I want to make sure I do them all justice. I'm grateful for the feedback.
> 
> To everyone else stuck at home too, I hope this gives you something to do. Stay safe, loves. We'll get through this.

**Author's Note:**

> I really hate the title for this, but I really wanted to post today. So I might change it. The word document name was the original title, but it's really mostly for one of the later chapters, so I'll probably just name that chapter I guess? Sorry about the rambling.
> 
> I'd like to especially thank Gordo the Frog (VenomSquidward) for their lovely comments on every chapter I've written. I always get a smile when I read them. 
> 
> Thank you everyone who commented on the first part of this AU. It meant so much to me that you liked reading it. I hope that you like the rest of it too. Welcome aboard my ridiculous hype train!


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